A Rat Falling Through Time and Space
by Shieldage
Summary: The week Dracula's in town, Rattrap lands in Sunnydale. Definitely not the most inviting place at night...


BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Transformers: Beast Wars created by Hasbro then written and animated by Mainframe Entertainment. Some dialogue from Season Five's premiere "Buffy vs. Dracula" through _Buffy World dot com_.

I have a potentially large fanwork, about a Cybertronian project called L.E.A.F., which is currently little more than thousands of words of notes. This is an offshoot from it that seems to be flowing well because I like writing Rattrap so I'll probably finish this first and then concentrate on the backstory.

Rewriting this from third-person present tense - I'm going to try having Rattrap reconstruct the bits he wasn't there for and see how that turns out.

* * *

I spun end over and as I fell through a space between worlds. Lines of energy swirled around and _through_ me. After a seemingly endless moment, I fell through a hole and emerged into the air above a seemingly deserted alleyway.

Keeping my cool, I landed smartly on my robot mode's unicycle wheel. Watching the lines of energy still crackling across my metal fingers, I had time to decide I _really_ did not like how it felt before the charge ripped away and I found myself turned inside out.

Landing on all four paws, I realized I'd been forcibly shifted into my beast mode.

"Eh." I sat down and flexed my 'hands', surprised at the lack of obvious circuitry. "Unexpected, but not that bad. Haven't been this pink and grey in awhile. Looks like I'm back to the body I had at the start of the Beast Wars."

I turned my head from side to side, checking myself out, then stared straight up into what was obviously Earth's full moon. "Yeah, that might have _something_ t' do with it."

From the rest of the night sky and the buildings surrounding me, not to mention the smells, I quickly decided I was on an Earth. Probably within a few decades of the Ark's opening, and the start of that war, if it existed there.

"Not sure if I want to be subjecting my fleshy paws to this much litter... Rattrap, Maximize!"

To my surprise, my transformation routines failed to engage. My usual silent triggers failed to work either...

"Rattrap, Terrorize? Transform and Roll Out? Assemble? Computer, System Status?" I asked, but there was no reply. Worriedly, I tried a few more commands, then checked my arm for a regular pulse. Yep, not even the faintest sound from my familiar internal machinery...

"Great, I'm a non-robotic, giant, intelligent, warm-blooded rat." I paused, finally hearing what I was saying. "Speaking _English_ -of all things- and I have no clue where I am. What could be worse than this?"

"_Ewww_," someone shouted from the shadows. "A giant rat! Kill it, minions!"

Catching a good glimpse of my pursuers, I dove for cover, muttering: "Why did I have to ask?"

##

A bit later, I poked my whiskered nose out from the grate where I'd hidden myself, trying to make some sense of the situation. It wasn't the hate plague... There was no red glow and the history vids I'd seen made no mention of yellowed eyes or facial transformations... Thank Primus for small favors.

The disfigured humans were sniffing the ground like animals trying to smell me out... A male got a particularly good whiff and turned to face my hiding place, the sub-human's evil grin revealing a particularly horrible set of fangs.

I scampered back into the hole as the sub-human charged forward. "Man," I muttered to myself. "This is worse than being chased by Vehicons back when Cybertron was hellish... No. Nothing's worse than that."

##

As the sub-human tore the grating out of the wall with super-human strength, I scampered through the crawlspace of the building I was hiding under. This wasn't matching anything I could recall about Earth's history. Earth's fiction, on the other hand...

I grimaced, then stood on my hind-legs and gnawed through a wooden support beam above my head.

"Eh," I said between bites. "It's worth a shot."

##

I rolled on my back and played dead until the creature was standing above me, then shoved the sharpened piece of wood I was lying on through the heart of the 'vampire'.

"Ha! I told Optimus that 'From Dusk 'til Dawn' was an 'educational' film." I grinned as the vampire disintegrated. "Which means this ain't my timestream... Oh well... I'm not one for melee weapons, but that was fun."

I whistled happily to myself as I unscrewed a grate on the street side of the complex and scurried out into the night, directly into the path of a pretty blond girl.

She took one look at me and her brow sprouted a few extra ridges. "I can't even get good minions! You're going to have to die. When I take over Sunnydale I don't want giant rats running around, messing up the place!"

"Just my luck, to run into another one." I muttered as I dodged her first swing. "Sunnydale? I've never heard of it."

"Ack!" she screamed in horror. "It talks! That means they can organize! I've got kill to you before you breed!"

"Hoo-boy," I sighed, hightailing it in the opposite direction.

* * *

"You know what? You're not so big. One round of old-fashioned fisticuffs, I bet you'd fold like a bitty baby," were the words I heard as I entered a small park and scurried across the grass at top-speed,

I had time to take in the general look of the black-haired men, the speaking one rolling up his sleeves to make him look bigger as the pale one stared, bemused, before I left them in my dust.

Piecing together what I learned later, I believe I've got the general course of what happened next, so I'll go ahead and fill that in. The names as well, while I'm at it; little reason not to.

The guy called Xander Harris stared after my retreating tail then, thoughts of bravado fading from his mind, turned his attention back to the vamp who was, quite possibly, the one true Dracula.

The Prince of Darkness met his eyes and shrugged. "It's your town."

"Okay," Xander said, getting back to his attempt at threatening the powerful being.

He didn't get very far with it, because a vamped-out Harmony Kendall had made an impressive leap over the grassy knoll. Intent on pursuing me, she didn't see them in time to halt her motion and slammed directly into the powerful vampire.

Dracula absorbed the full force of the impact and steadied her with one hand.

"That's it, I'm out of here!" Xander threw up his arms at this latest interruption and turned around. Walking away, he shouted over his shoulder: "Trust me, you two are _made_ for each other."

Harmony, examining the better qualities of the older vampire, decided she was quite impressed. "You're a yummy treat," she said, running her hand down his chest. "I'm recruiting for minions, would be interested in one of our many _positions_?"

##

Dracula -for once- was speechless.

* * *

Panting, I slowed my pace, fairly certain no-one had been following me since the park. Shifting into a nice ambling gait, I raised my head high and decided to get a decent sense of the town.

Further down the street a dark blonde and a redhead were walking until the blonde heard my approach. She spun around, drawing out a stake, but her friend grabbed her arm and held it in place.

"Oh no! Amy's under the thrall of Dracula," the redhead yelped as she turned to address me. "You're big, but you're still nice, please fight the brainwashing... No, wait. He'd have to come in the room." She paused for a moment before becoming angry. "How could you be dumb enough to invite him in? Oh well. I know the dark energy has pumped you up in size, but you're still pretty far from human..."

"Hello," I chided, having had enough of being confused with some other rodent. "_Male_."

"Oh," said the redhead I'd come to know as Willow. "Sorry."

"So, Dracula lives here," I asked, idly scratching my chin. "_Interesting_. I think I may have just escaped the clutches of one of his 'brides'."

"Great," the blonde, whom I'd later know as Buffy, said, shaking her head. "I must be slightly thralled, or that wouldn't make me even remotely jealous."

"Well, he is the Dark Prince," Willow said, nodding. "Completely understandable. I'm sure that if I didn't have Tara I'd be slightly crushy too. I mean, I even had a moment of wanting Spike to bite me, before I beaned him in the head with a lamp."

"That's it," I announced. "I'm getting off the streets. Maybe I'll walk around in daylight when the people are saner."

"Good plan." Buffy nodded. "Play nice and maybe I won't have to chase you down with an axe."

"Great." I scuttled off, half-paying attention to what was going on behind me.

"Hey," Willow asked, tugging Buffy's sleeve. "You sure it's a good idea letting him go?"

"He's a giant talking rat, but he's shorter than I am and his eyes aren't glowy. Unless Giles says there's a rodent prophecy bringing on the apocalypse, I'm not going to worry about it."

##

Left to my own devices, I walked down the shadowy streets of suburban Sunnydale, looking for a place to hide out until morning.

"Hmm... I'm not taking any chances with a place that looks abandoned if there are monsters on the loose. I guess I'll just have to find someone who's home and hope for the best. There's a likely place." I leaned forward to sniff the air. "Chlorine compounds... Sounds of laundry being done. Seems friendly enough."

After checking to see if anyone was watching me, I quickly popped the lock on the basement window of what turned out to be Xander's home and stuck my head in to get a better look.


End file.
